Chuck Lorre’s Netflix comedy series, The Kominsky Method, is back again. I thoroughly enjoyed the 2018 debut season, and this year’s version is just as comical and satisfying. Starring Michael Douglas and Alan Arkin, and set in Los Angeles, it’s essentially about the pitfalls and perils of aging in America. The themes are topical and […]
The 25th anniversary of the historic peace treaty between Israel and Jordan went unnoticed in both countries in a telling admission of their increasingly frosty relations. Implemented on October 26, 1994 in an upbeat ceremony in the Arava desert about a year after Israel and the Palestinians announced the Oslo accord, it was Israel’s second […]
Call it, if you will, green gold. The cultivation of avocados has become a massive business in the past few decades, particularly in California, Mexico and Chile. But the industry in these countries faces difficult challenges, according to an intriguing Netflix documentary, The Avocado War. The avocado, once dismissed as fatty and unhealthy, is now […]
It’s 1989 and Ethiopia is being torn apart by a civil war. The country has sunk into the slough of violence and despair and people, particularly Jews, are desperate to leave. Fig Tree, directed by Israeli/Ethiopian filmmaker Aalam-Warqe Davidian, is set during this tumultuous period. Premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last year, Fig […]
Israel is wallowing in a state of political paralysis. For the past six months, in the wake of two inconclusive elections, the country has been adrift, bereft of a stable government. It’s a reflection of the deep divisions in Israeli society. The current situation began when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was unable to form a […]
Donald Trump hailed it as “an incredible outcome,” alluding to the U.S.-sponsored ceasefire that appears to have ended the fighting between the Turkish army and the Syrian Kurds in a broad swath of northern Syria. Trump’s self-serving analysis of the truce, brokered by U.S. Vice-President Mike Pence in a meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip […]
For five years, until 2018, the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad besieged Eastern Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus populated in the main by Syrians opposed to his totalitarian regime. Following the outbreak of the civil war in Syria in 2011, Eastern Ghouta was regularly pummelled by forces loyal to Assad. In the summer of […]
Israel’s increasingly close economic ties with China, its third largest trading partner, pose a problem for its chief ally, the United States. The Trump administration, currently locked in a trade war with China, has warned Israel in recent months that its pivotal relationship with the United States could be adversely affected unless it scales back […]
In his semi-autobiographical film, Pain and Glory, the 70-year-old Spanish director Pedro Almodovar conducts a critical examination of himself. In this respect, the title of the movie is appropriate. Salvador (Antonio Bandaras), the aging character who portrays him, has amassed acclaim in his industry, but now he suffers from a rash of debilitating ailments and […]
Adam Zucker’s American Muslim leaves a viewer with a nuanced portrait of Muslims in the United States in the age of Donald Trump. It will be screened at New York City’s DOC NYC, the country’s largest documentary film festival, on November 10 and 12. This impassioned and informative movie tells us that Muslims, comprising one percent of […]